Sunday, October 15, 2017

British actress Lysette Anthony has
told police that Harvey Weinstein raped her, the Sunday Times
reported, becoming the fifth woman to level such accusations against
the disgraced Hollywood mogul.

The 54-year-old actress, who currently
appears in British soap Hollyoaks, told Metropolitan Police last week
that she had originally met Weinstein in New York, and agreed to meet
him later at his rented house in London, according to the paper.

"The next thing I knew he was half
undressed and he grabbed me. It was the last thing I expected and I
fled," she told the Times.

Anthony, who appeared in Woody Allen's
1992 film "Husbands and Wives", said that Weinstein then
began stalking her, turning up unannounced at her house.

"He pushed me inside and rammed me
against the coat rack," she said of the attack in the 1980s. "He
was trying to kiss me and shove inside me. Finally I just gave up."

Weinstein has denied all allegations of
nonconsensual sex.

Anthony first came to my attention when
she played Angelique Bouchard in the short-lived 1991 Dark Shadows
remake. While Anthony is not especially known as a scream queen, her
extensive body of work (she has 89 acting credits on IMDB) does
include many horror films and TV shows.

My favorite horror work by Anthony is
Trilogy of Terror II (1996), in which she played the lead role in all
three tales of that horror anthology sequel. This was in the
tradition of Karen Black playing the lead in all three of the
original Trilogy of Terror's stories.

The original is justly considered a
horror classic and Black's performance was a tough act to follow. But
while the remake is little remembered, Anthony's performance was a
worthy successor to Black's. Especially in "Bobby" (the middle story), wherein
Anthony plays a mother who turns to witchcraft in an attempt to resurrect
her dead son. By all means, watch it.

Horror is a tight-knit community,
composed of passionate fans. Although all of Weinstein's victims
should be supported, reading about Anthony felt personal, as though
"one of our own" was attacked. Let's hope Anthony and the
other women find peace and justice.

Thursday, August 31, 2017

Princess Diana died 20 years ago today in a car accident. Unless you were alive at the time, you can't imagine the mass hysteria that swept the British public over her death.
I never understood the adulation she attracted. She seemed rather ordinary to me. A pretty face, but lacking any great accomplishments other than marrying into the royal family at age 19. One of those celebrities who are famous simply for being famous.
It wasn't my imagination. Major newspapers today are recalling the mass hysteria. Jonathan Freedland writes in The Guardian:

It has become an embarrassing memory, like a mawkish, self-pitying
teenage entry in a diary. We cringe to think of it. It is our collective
moment of madness, a week when somehow we lost our grip. A decade on,
we look back and wonder what came over us.
There were some who felt that way at the time, but they were the
minority. Indeed, they complained they were a marginalised, even
oppressed, group - gagged dissidents in a new totalitarian state of the
emotions. Some looked at the mountain of Cellophane-wrapped bouquets
that piled up outside Buckingham Palace - a million of them, it was said
- and sniffed "floral fascism" in the air. Later, Christopher Hitchens
wrote that in the week after Princess Diana was killed in a Paris car
crash, Britain became a "one-party state", such was the coercive nature
of the public reaction. He sought out the Britons who had been forced to
close their shops or cancel sporting events on the day of the funeral,
lest they feel the rage of the tear-stained hordes outside. The writer
Carmen Callil was more specific: "It was like the Nuremberg rallies."

Such was the crazy, cultish, worship of Princess Diana, that I wrote an essay at the time, entitled Deification of a Princess.

My predictions mostly failed to come true, apart from foreseeing the explosion in conspiracy theories. Many "murder of Diana" conspiracy books are available on Amazon. One book even attributes her "murder" to a plot involving both the CIA and MI6. But the Diana worship died down. It turned out to be a mere temporary insanity rather than full blown madness.
However, I dug out my old essay (I still have computer files going back 31 years), and reprint it here, as I wrote it 20 years ago.

Deification of a Princess

Born a Lady. Lived a
Princess. Died an Angel.

So said one of the thousands (millions?) of
eulogies to Princess Diana written on posters, uploaded onto web
pages or inscribed in registers around the world. Aside from the one
in London, the British consul here in Los Angeles provided a register
for the public, and I heard of a register sighting in Chicago.

So as we approach
the new millennium do we witness the consecration of a new messiah.
By contrast, Elvis can only compare to John the Baptist. James Dean
and Marilyn were mere prophets. Sure, Diana died before the
millennium but Christ was born before Year One. Note the
symmetry. New Agers have
another term: synchronicity. When seemingly unrelated events
coincide it must all mean something.

Diana died at age 36,
which is when Mother Teresa, whose rosaries were buried with Diana
and in whose shadow she died, founded her mission. Marilyn, too, died
at 36. Don't laugh. The First of the Ten Insights in the bestselling
New Age book, The Celestine Prophecy, is that coincidences are
never merely coincidence.

Not that any of this
is necessary. Diana cultists will believe in her divinity because, as
UFO buffs candidly admit, I want to believe. The numerological
mental gymnastics are rationalizations, not rationale. In New Age
terms, everyone has their own truth, and everyone's truth is as true
as anyone else's.

Diana's cult will
sprout innocently, almost unnoticed. As with so much modern
loopiness, it will initially be justified and expressed in
psychobabble. People will erect personal shrines to Diana in their
homes and offices, maybe a photo and a candle. It will make them
"feel better." All part of the "healing process."
No one will ask, why the need to heal?
But it won't stop there. Soon
people will associate their nicely healed good feelings with whatever
good luck comes their way. After reaching-out to Diana at work by
meditating (or daydreaming) on the smiling Diana photo on their
desks, the boss gives them a raise. Surely, Diana must have
interceded for them in some heavenly afterlife.

Eventually,
emotional and financial healing will extend to the physical Miracle
cures which will be attributed to Diana. Expect to see weeping Diana
portraits, busts, and statues. Most Dianas will cry water. The better
ones will weep saltwater. A few will go the limit and shed tears of
blood.

Diana's likeness
will be seen and photographed in cloud formations. Her image will
appear in waffles, flapjacks, scrambled eggs, and hash browns. No
item on America's roadside café breakfast menu will remain
unblessed. Savvy proprietors will keep ready rolls of film and cans
of shellac, for no one knows the day or hour of her next appearance.
The People's Princess, ever the democrat, won't discriminate. She
will appear on barn doors, in crop circles, and even in bathtub water
stains.

As though sensing
the people want more than her image, Diana sightings shall come to
pass. The Princess of Hearts shall visit hospital rooms and bowling
alleys, often bathed in white light. People returning from near
death will report seeing her at the end of that ubiquitous blue
tunnel of light, whereupon she sends them home with a smile and a
message. She will appear in deserts and on mountaintops, in Third
World slums to comfort the poor and in suburban basements come for a
quick game of ping pong.

Confusing matters
will be those conspiracy theories claiming Diana and Dodi faked the
accident and fled to Egypt to escape the all-powerful Royal Family.
Conspiracy buffs and LaRouchites will be intrigued, but Diana
cultists will eschew Cairo and instead make their pilgrimages to the
weeping statues and pancake houses, some in wheelchairs. They will
arrive to find merchants selling Diana talismans, good luck charms,
healing crystals carved in her image, and glow-in-the-dark Princess
Posters.

Naturally, the New
Age will embrace Diana. They need a new sales item. By now, pretty
much everyone who wants a crystal has one. Santa Monica's Phoenix
Bookstore closed this year. Diana might reverse this trend. She can
provide bases for whole new religions, or she can be
incorporated into existing neo-pagan belief systems. To the Romans,
Diana was the goddess of the hunt and of the moon. That Diana was a
bloodthirsty virgin. Nevertheless, revisionist goddess worshipers
will strain for a connection. To each her own truth.

Christians shall
also claim Diana. Diana may have to share Catholic affection with
Mary, but she has the Protestant field to herself. The mainline
churches are so empty and squishy that anyone with charisma,
especially a woman espousing what sounds like a touchy-feely social
gospel, is easily sucked into their vacuum. And even some Catholics
will elevate Diana to a manifestation of Mary, just as some
Christians interpret Elvis as a second Christ. (I am not making this
up; I saw Elvis fans say so on TV).

I suppose this must
all mean something. I don't know what. Maybe that post-modern
civilization suffers from a great spiritual void, people made
desperate and angst-ridden by a ravenous and parched thirst for
transcendent meaning that goes unquenched. Or maybe just that people
are stupid.

Saturday, July 08, 2017

The term "politically correct" is bandied about so much as to have
become meaningless. But what really does it mean? Here's a history of
the term (as best I know it).

"PC" has gone through four stages of meaning. "Politically correct" was initially coined by Leon Trotsky
to refer favorably to those whose views remained in sync with the
ever-shifting Bolshevik Party line. This was important, as "not PC"
people risked prison or death.

"Politically correct"
was revived (and again, used favorably) by 1960s New Left radicals who
fancied themselves revolutionaries in the mold of Che, Castro, and Mao.

"Politically correct" was first used negatively by 1980s conservatives, following the publication of Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind.
Conservatives embraced the term "politically incorrect" as a badge of
honor to contrast their championing of free speech against campus
leftists who used speech codes to suppress debate on sensitive topics.
This was also when the term first became widely known by its acronym,
"PC."

In these three previous stages, everyone agreed
that PC meant Left, and "not PC" meant Right. But because liberals
don't like a reputation of being anti-free speech, within a few years
they did a turnabout, and called their opponents "PC" and themselves
"not PC." Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect
is representative of this fourth stage, creating the odd result of a
self-proclaimed "not PC" show winning a very PC environmental media
award.

However, despite liberals' turnabout,
conservatives continued to refer to themselves too as "not PC." Thus
"PC" has lost any specific meaning in this fourth stage, since everyone
defines their position as the now chic "not PC," and their opponents as
"PC." (A far cry from the days when Russians dreaded the Chekists who
executed "not PC" people.)

Monday, June 19, 2017

News outlets are reporting that actor Stephen Furst has died. According to JD Knapp at Daily Variety [June 17, 2017]:

Stephen
Furst, best known for getting his start in “Animal House,” has passed
away due to complications with diabetes, Variety can confirm. He was 63
years old.

Furst died in his Moorpark, Calif. home on Friday. His sons Nathan
and Griff Furst confirmed their father’s death on Facebook Saturday
evening.

New media are highlighting what they regard as Furst's most noteworthy acting achievements, such as roles in Animal House, Babylon 5, and St. Elsewhere. They're overlooking the work by Furst that most impressed me: that of "Junior" Keller in the 1980 horror film, The Unseen.

The Unseen is one of my favorite
horror films. (And I am not the person to say that lightly.) A framed
poster from the film currently hangs in my living room. The one on the
right. There are manyUnseen posters out there, with different images. I should know. I own a few.

In The Unseen, Furst performed splendidly as an inbred, retarded killer. In my review of the film, I wrote:

But it
is Stephen Furst (Animal House)
who shines as Junior Keller ... the unseen. Weldon describes
Junior as a "murderous, retarded, overweight, full- grown
baby." That's kinda what Junior looks like, but not really what he is.
Having
seen The
Unseen a dozen or so times, I suspect he
kills the women by
accident. He merely wants a closer look (at Lamm's golden
hair, for
instance), and pulls too hard. A child who doesn't know
his own strength. And he's not a "full-grown baby," he just looks like
one because he's fat,
dressed in soiled diaper-like rags, and he can't talk. He
can only
grunt.

Okay actors. Here's an assignment: Portray a sympathetic mutant retard killer, while
wearing soiled diaper-like rags, in makeup that makes you look like some
ugly incestuous spawn from Deliverance. And all you're allowed to do is grunt. Grunt and stomp and pound
and grunt. And oh yeah, try and be nuanced and subtle.

Furst
does it.

His Junior
is ugly and frightening, yet we detect his motivations
beneath his grunting
and stomping. His frustrated ineffectual attempts to
communicate
with Bach and recruit her for his playmate. His love for
mom. His fear, then anger, at dad. However repulsive and scary and
unsympathetic
Junior initially appears, his demise is poignant. I
hesitate to equate
Furst's Junior with Karloff's Monster, but I also hesitate
to dismiss the
comparison out of hand.

You can see the entire film on YouTube (although I also own it on Beta, VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray -- in addition to seeing it in the theater when it was first released).

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

New York City's famed subways were famously horrifying during the 1970s and even the 1980s. I know, because I rode the subways back then. I even memorialized the experience it in my novel, Manhattan Sharks, set during the rise of the yuppies in 1983.

And so this New York Times article by Emma G. Fitzsimmons and J. David Goodman [May 15, 2017], about the subway's current woes, evoked memories. The article says, in part:

A signal malfunction at the height of the morning commute in New York City upends subway service from Brooklyn to the Bronx. Switch problems leave riders stranded across Brooklyn. A power failure at just one Manhattan station snarls nearly a dozen of the system's 22 lines....

The subway -- a crown jewel of urban diversity, a vital piece of the local economy and a point of pride for millions of New Yorkers up and down the economic ladder -- is rapidly deteriorating. Delays have soared to more than 70,000 each month from about 28,000 per month in 2012. Riders are losing wages when they miss work. Business leaders are worried about the future. Residents are souring on the city.

"I never know if I am going to get to anything on time," said Frank Leone, 31, who lives in Queens. Worsening subway service has made him rethink living in New York City. "I give myself an hour to get to work everyday, even though it only takes 35 minutes," he said, "and I still show up late to work."

In the 1990s, Mayor Giuliani did much to improve the subways. But now it seems that, under Mayor De Blasio, the system is reverting to its previous state of urban chaos and mechanical decrepitude.

Fortunately, New York's subways are no longer my problem. I've long since escaped New York for Los Angeles, penning Manhattan Sharks as my good-bye, good riddance note to the Big Apple. The City of Angels has its own troubles (e.g., Hollywood Witches), but at least it's not New York.

Saturday, February 18, 2017

In Fahrenheit 451, American author Ray Bradbury predicted that progressives (not conservatives) would enforce censorship in the United
States, beginning with books deemed "insensitive" to
minorities. Well, today's publishers have caught up with
Bradbury's dystopian vision.

Everdeen Mason of the Washington Post (reprinted in the Chicago Tribune, February 15, 2017) reports:

These days, though, a
book may get an additional check from an unusual source: a sensitivity
reader, a person who, for a nominal fee, will scan the book for racist,
sexist or otherwise offensive content. These readers give feedback based
on self-ascribed areas of expertise such as "dealing with terminal
illness," "racial dynamics in Muslim communities within families' or "transgender issues."

"The
industry recognizes this is a real concern," said Cheryl Klein, a
children's and young adult book editor and author of The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults. Klein, who works at
the publisher Lee & Low, said that she has seen the casual use of
specialized readers for many years but that the process has become more
standardized and more of a priority, especially in books for young
readers.

Sensitivity
readers have emerged in a climate -- fueled in part by social media -- in
which writers are under increased scrutiny for their portrayals of
people from marginalized groups, especially when the author is not a
part of that group.

Last year, for instance, J.K. Rowling was
strongly criticized by Native American readers and scholars for her
portrayal of Navajo traditions in the 2016 story "History of Magic in
North America." Young-adult author Keira Drake was forced to revise [my italics] her
fantasy novel The Continent after an online uproar over its portrayal
of people of color and Native backgrounds. More recently, author
Veronica Roth -- of Divergent fame -- came under fire for her new novel, Carve the Mark. In addition to being called racist, the book was
criticized for its portrayal of chronic pain in its main character.

Some might argue that "sensitivity readers" are no big deal, because their use is not government imposed (yet), and so it's not really censorship. It's an editorial decision. Some authors quoted in the article even claim to be grateful for the "help" they receive from "sensitivity readers" -- helping these authors to portray their characters "correctly."

"Thank you Comrade Sensitivity Reader, for correcting my errors!"

But how voluntary is that consent? "Progressive" activists are never satisfied. They will increasingly pressure hold-out publishers to hire "sensitivity readers." Publishers, in turn, will increasingly pressure authors to make the corrections "requested" by "sensitivity readers."

Lee & Low Books has a companywide policy to use sensitivity
readers. Stacy Whitman, publisher and editorial director of Lee &
Low's middle-grade imprint Tu Books, said she will even request a
sensitivity reader before she chooses to acquire a book to publish [my italics].

"It's
important for authors to consider expert reader feedback and figure out
how to solve the problems they point out," Whitman said.

In other words, whether an author consents to "solve the problems" complained about by some sensitivity commissar will determine its chances for publication. This will mean ever less diversity in literature, because weak, cowardly, incompetent, stupid, and evil personality traits will become (even more so than already) reserved for straight, white, Christian, male characters.

Returning to Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, here's an excerpt from the Fire Chief's speech, explaining how society eventually got around to book-burning:

Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere.

The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy [my italics], remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic-books survive. And the three-dimensional sex magazines, of course.

There you have it, Montag. It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! [my italics] Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.

Bradbury didn't get everything right. Publishers don't care about the sensitivities of Mormons or Baptists or Swedes or Germans. Such is our "progressive" culture. Poking fun at non-Christian religions is hate, but bashing Christianity is healthy satire. Nazis are unqualified villains, but Communists are at worst misguided idealists. At best they are the noble victims of McCarthyism. (The sensitivities of the victims of Communism be damned.)

But Bradbury had a great insight. Censorship doesn't start with government dictates. It begins with popular pressure. It begins in the private sector. And the signs are ominous.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

I guess it's nice to be quoted in a major publication like The Huffington Post, even if they do misspell my name (something I've lived with since childhood -- Why is it so hard to spell Sipos?).

In her article, "5 Reasons Kevin Sorbo Should Play John Galt," Jennifer Anju Grossman writes:

"Sorbo has already played a
John Galt-like character in an indie film called Alongside Night, based
on a 1979 novel by Neil Schulman. Writing for HollywoodInvestigator.com, Thomas M. Sipo [sic!] observes:

" 'In the near future, the
U.S. government grows ever more oppressive as it tries to avert economic
collapse due to its excessive taxing, borrowing, spending, and
regulation. Meanwhile, a morally principled group of anti-government
cadres prepares for a freer, post-socialist
America. Atlas Shrugged? No, it's Alongside Night, a new indie film based on the 1979 novel of the same
name.